Micro-well and nano-well plates, which are, in relevant industries, collectively referred to as “microtiter plates,” are used widely in biological, chemical and pharmaceutical research applications for the purposes of selectively retaining and analyzing small quantities of biological and chemical agents. Currently, microtiter plates are predominantly fabricated from injection-molded and/or machined plates of plastic is formed to included multiple, well-ordered well sites. For various reasons, including analytical efficiency and conservation of valuable reagents, the pharmaceutical industry, for example, has placed increasing emphasis on miniaturized sample-screening formats. Accordingly, well-density on microtiter plates has continually increased and, for instance, a standard 3×5-inch microtiter plate currently includes 1536 holes (i.e., wells). It will be appreciated, however, that the degree to which well sites can be miniaturized in an effort to accommodate more numerous well sites on a plate of standardized dimensions is limited by conventional fabrication methods.
In response to the call for well-site miniaturization, the fiber optics industry has undertaken limited efforts to fabricate well plates by selectively intagliating optical fiber faceplates. More specifically, the state of the art in this regard is represented by a process in fabrication of a fiber optic faceplate including a plurality of cores fusedly retained by fused cladding material in accordance with standard processes well-known to those of ordinary skill in the optical-fiber-component fabrication arts. The cores are fabricated from a core material that is soluble in a predetermined solvent in which the cladding material is relatively insoluble. The faceplate is then chemically etched from one side to partially dissolve selected cores to define a set of closed-bottom wells in the fused cladding material. As illustrated by well plate of FIG. A, one limitation of the current faceplate intagliation process is the prohibitive difficulty of defining wells of uniform depth that exhibit “intended” bottom profiles. The well plate of FIG. A exhibits non-uniform well depth and irregular well bottoms, characteristics that are exaggerated for illustrative purposes.
Accordingly, in light of the limitations of traditional well-plate fabrication processes and the more nascent efforts to intagliate optical fiber faceplates for adaptation as well plates, there exists a need for improved methods of fabricating well plates exhibiting large numbers of small, well-defined and uniform well sites.